Electoral Administration Bill

I agree with the last contention. I welcomed a couple of suggestions made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) about how we might increase registration and participation. As for experiments of the kind that we saw at the time of the European elections, I have no problem with the use of novel forms of voting provided that measures to combat fraud are in place beforehand. The difficulty—which we pointed out repeatedly to the Government at the time—was that while they wanted to increase turnout, they were not prepared to establish measures to maintain the integrity of the ballot. The Birmingham judgments, with which Members will be familiar, do not relate directly to those elections, but they are damning. A senior judge, Richard Mawrey, quoted the Government in his obiter dicta:"““There are no proposals to change the rules governing election procedures for the next election, including those for postal voting. The systems already in place to deal with the allegations of electoral fraud are clearly working.””" What complacency on the Government’s part, in the face of clear evidence that the systems were not working. Richard Mawrey commented:"““Anybody who has sat through the case I have just tried and listened to evidence of electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic would find this statement surprising. To assert that ‘the systems already in place to deal with the allegations of electoral fraud are clearly working’ indicates a state not simply of complacency but of denial.””" I believe that, at that point, the Government were in denial, but I welcome the Minister of State’s current view. She has clearly distanced herself from the earlier position, and we are making progress. There are omissions from the Bill. The big one is the issue of personal identifiers and individual registration—in fact, two issues which, although not identical, are related. Here we come to the question of balance. What personal identifiers are appropriate to deter fraudsters, while not tipping the balance by reducing the incidence of registration or voting? That is the crucial equilibrium that we must achieve. I believe that the Government have fallen on one side of that balance. We will seek to persuade them in Committee, but they have not yet been prepared to accept the wider palette of personal identifiers to reduce fraud. I believe that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire has fallen on the other side, because I do not believe that national insurance numbers constitute a good personal identifier. I think that such an arrangement would deter many people. I frankly admit that I do not know my national insurance number. If I were asked to give it, I would not be able to, and I think that many others are in the same position. I know of no bank or financial institution that uses national insurance numbers as a personal identifier. Moreover, we know that national insurance numbers are occasionally duplicated, that—as the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire accepted—they are sometimes retained after a person is deceased, and that they are known by people other than those to whom they belong. Employers, for example, know the insurance numbers of their employees—although they probably do not know their mothers’ maiden names, or other identifiers that are used on the telephone by people contacting their banks. What I do accept is that we need to do better than we are doing now. I see the Government edging towards a conclusion that I consider inescapable: that we need personal identifiers, especially in the case of postal ballots when people do not present themselves at polling stations in person.